“Mira.”
Storm gray eyes with gold bleeding through. My tongue darted out to wet my lower lip and his gaze tracked the movement, jaw tightening.
“This is a terrible idea,” I whispered.
By morning, the storm had passed. I stood at my door and looked at all three of them.
“I need a day. Just one. To sit with this.”
“Take what you need,” Solomon said.
They left. I sat at my desk and opened my journal. The pages filled fast, messy, my hand barely keeping up with my brain. Entries about the bond, about shifting, about eyes that glowed gold and silver.
The last entry was steadier. I’d slowed down, taken my time.
“I’m not sure about the supernatural parts. But I’m sure about the ordinary parts. The floor. The knuckles. The counter. I believe them now after seeing it with my own eyes and I-”
The pen dragged across the page. A long streak of ink trailing off the edge, because the tea had hit and my hand had stopped working before the sentence could finish. The chamomile had tasted bitter beneath the honey.
My legs gave out on the stockroom floor. Smoke curled beneath the door.
The last thought before the darkness: I was going to say yes.
Then nothing.
Seven days, erased.
Until now.
“Mira.”
Percival’s voice.
“Love, wake up. You’re thrashing.”
My eyes flew open. Morning light in the cabin bedroom. Three bodies surrounded mine, the sheets tangled around my legs from whatever my sleeping body had been doing.
Percy’s face hovered above me, brow creased, his hand on my cheek. Solomon was propped on one elbow, silver eyes alert, already scanning me for injury. Lucian’s arm tightened around my waist from behind, his chest pressed against my back.
“You were shifting in your sleep,” Lucian said. “Your heart rate spiked.”
My pulse was still hammering. Tears tracked down my temples and into my hair, and I couldn’t tell if they were grief or relief or both.
“I remember everything,” I said. “The whole week. All of it.”
Percy’s thumb wiped a tear from my cheekbone. “The bond unlocked them?”
“Yes… Everything.” My voice cracked. “The journal. I wrote that I was choosing to hope, and then someone drugged my tea and burned my shop and stole it all.”
Solomon’s hand found mine.
“It’s back now,” he said. “No one can take it again.”
I pressed my face into the pillow and let the completeness wash through me.
Percy’s thumb traced my cheekbone again. “You alright, love?”
“Yeah.” I exhaled. Long, deliberate. “Yeah, I’m alright.”
